


there's a right to your wrongs (there’s a truth in my lies)

by Solanaceae



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Animal Death, F/F, Gen, a changeling and an elf walk into a bar -, in this house we experiment with necromancy and join organized crime groups!, wizards with a strong moral compass?? lmao no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26154493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/pseuds/Solanaceae
Summary: What am I?she asks at six, face buried in her mother’s shoulder, tears staining Zavile’s tunic.What am I?she asks at fourteen, holding a tiny heartbeat in her fingers and sending it to silence with a sound.What am I?she asks at twenty, hands slick with blood and magic that has turned against her.(A destroying. A downfall.)
Relationships: Original D&D Character/Original D&D Character
Kudos: 2





	there's a right to your wrongs (there’s a truth in my lies)

**Author's Note:**

> totally unedited d&d character backstory originally written in early 2019, ft. disaster changeling wizard with -2 charisma. posted bc it's been a hot second since i played her and i want Validation and Attention, as always.
> 
> ***
> 
> _there's a right to your wrongs_   
>  _there's a truth in my lies_   
>  _i can't hear from your words_   
>  _but i see in your eyes_
> 
> —babylon, delain

This is truth.

Ryn wakes with blood in her mouth and trembling hands. She’s half a mile out from the city of Iryo, uncountable miles from home. In the dark, she forces herself to lie still, counting the breaths that tear in and out of her throat until her heartbeat slows, her breathing evens out.

The blood, she realizes, is from her tongue, which she seems to have bitten in her sleep. She exhales slowly, rolls over to face the room. It’s small, the cheapest the inn offers, and there’s just the bed, a dresser, and a mirror over the dresser that she’s turned to face the wall. Her bag—fully packed—leans against the end of the bed, and her spellbook is tucked under her pillow.

She runs her injured tongue over her teeth, thinking, then sits up and rummages in her bag. Tucked into an interior pocket is a folded square of parchment, sealed with scarlet wax imprinted with a chrysanthemum. She doesn’t need to turn it over to know that the shifting red Sylvan letters on the other side are unreadable; she’s never been able to read them. For a moment, a memory of the face of her mother, laugh lines imprinted on her face, long dark hair pulled back into a tight bun.

_Accept this when you’re in danger_ , Zavile said, pressing the letter into her hand only hours before Cenna’s death, and Ryn hardly thought about it at the time.

For a heartbeat, her fingers hover over the wax seal, poised to break it.

( _Why would you be worthy?_ a voice like a dream asks, and she still does not have an answer.)

She tucks it into her bag, falls back onto the bed with a sigh. Stares up at the ceiling, swallowing back the taste of dirty iron. Considers, briefly, setting the letter on fire, but decides that’s unwise.

At some point, she sleeps.

***

She’s six, and she’s looking in the mirror into eyes of flat ice.

The girl that stares back at her is not her, but when she lifts a hand to touch the mirror, the reflection’s hand moves as well. Both are gray-skinned, pale nails crescent moons against the strange storm-cloud shade. Her face, far narrower than her usual _human_ face, is creased with alien emotion, crowned with white hair that falls loose around her shoulders.

But the eyes—perfect expanses of white unbroken by pupils—are what make her burst into tears. The eyes well with water, too, but there’s nothing in there, none of the fear she feels pounding in her chest, just the ice and the gray and a gaze that isn’t hers.

She runs crying to her mother— _what am I, Mama, what am I?_ —and Zavile takes her into her arms, and does not tell her the truth. Ryn will grow up with that question festering on her tongue, leaking decay into every word she speaks. Even once she learns to control the shifting, learns to put on new faces and new voices, she never knows _how_ she does it.

_What am I?_ she asks at six, face buried in her mother’s shoulder, tears staining Zavile’s tunic.

_What am I?_ she asks at fourteen, holding a tiny heartbeat in her fingers and sending it to silence with a sound.

_What am I?_ she asks at twenty, hands slick with blood and magic that has turned against her.

( _A destroying. A downfall._ )

***

The second person she murders is a middle-aged man the Black Wings want dead for a reason she isn’t told. This is a test, Val tells her. Once she’s done this, she’ll be part of the Black Wings family.

There’s very little blood involved. Val boosts her over the wall that surrounds the massive mansion—whoever this man is, he’s rich—then keeps watch as Ryn slips inside. She’s under strict orders not to leave any trace of her presence, but she steals a pearl necklace anyway.

The man is asleep next to his wife, snoring loudly, his mustache rising and falling with each breath. Ryn stands beside the bed, heartbeat roaring in her ears, distantly aware of how her entire body is shaking.

Val’s smile, the way her green eyes sparkled when she took Ryn’s hand. _Part of our family._

She takes a measured breath, then presses her hands lightly to the man’s temples and focuses. Lightning springs from her hands, burning into the man’s skull, and his eyes fly open moments before she sends another blast through his head. He goes limp, eyes rolling back in his head. She eases his dead form back down onto his pillows before stepping back. The faint smell of burnt hair rises, accompanied by something more like meat frying. She doesn’t think about that too hard.

Outside, Val is waiting for her. “How did it go?” she asks.

Ryn nods, gives a thumbs up. She doesn’t quite trust her voice right now, not with her heart trying to leap out of her throat like it is.

Val kisses her, hand tangling in Ryn’s hair, and Ryn can feel her laughing.

_What does a murderer’s mouth taste like_? she thinks, before remembering that Val has almost certainly also killed people before, and Ryn herself was a murderer long before tonight.

“Welcome to the family,” Val says, pulling back, and despite it all, Ryn feels her heart slowing and—incredibly—a smile spreading across her face. “You’re one of us now.”

***

This is another truth.

Torra was abandoned at birth, because it’s easier to pretend that family doesn’t matter that way. And anyway, wasn’t she abandoned? And isn’t she unwanted?

(Alwara smiling like only an eleven year old can, _you’re going to win, Ryn, you’re going to be the best—_ and didn’t she win? Isn’t she always the one with bloody hands, in the end?)

Torra is a tiefling, skin like the sky and eyes like leaves, thick curved horns a glaring brand of infernal heritage. People don’t trust her; they see the devil before the girl. Torra smiles hesitantly and hardly ever laughs and is the coat that Ryn puts on most often. She’s comforting in a way Yrex and Jilyra aren’t.

Val likes her best as Jil. Says it’s strange to see her own eyes staring back at her when Ryn is Torra. Ryn doesn’t tell her that Torra’s eyes only became that color after she met the elf, because Val is the most beautiful person Ryn has ever met, and Torra wants to be just as pretty.

Ryn doesn’t, though. It’s one of those strange things, the ways her personas become their own people. She doesn’t tell Val about it; she isn’t sure how to explain it without sounding insane—how she feels fragmented, unwhole, but stepping into Yrex’s red scales or Jilyra’s cold smile or Torra’s blue horns feels like safety.

***

Ryn is twelve when the Underdark exploration party returns to the city. Her mother brings her along, because she’s old enough now to know about these sorts of things. Zavile changes when she’s around other knights, like Knight Zavile Crowstrike-Elphila is different from Ryn’s mother, who laughs often and dances in the kitchen while Marcraes cooks. Knight Zavile is solemn and stands ramrod-straight and speaks loudly. Ryn trails after her, one hand knotted in Zavile’s royal blue cloak.

The exploration party brought back a wagon full of specimens, which they’ve laid out on display in a side room of the lord’s mansion. There are tall mushrooms that glow a sickly blue, and rocks hewn out of the earth with veins of gold or silver flickering in them, and many other strange things that all blur together in Ryn’s mind.

At the far end of the room is a tall cage made of three layers of glass, with wire between. Inside is a strange figure—nearly seven feet tall, with mauve skin and tentacles that hang limp from its face. Its eyes are closed, but Ryn can see the rise and fall of its chest as it breathes. It wears the ragged remnants of dark robes.

“What is that?” she whispers to her mother.

Zavile consults one of the arcanists who had gone on the exploration, then returns to Ryn and says, “That’s an illithid. They eat brains. The cage is magical, otherwise it could probably kill most of the people in this room.”

“Not you. You’re too strong,” Ryn says confidently, and her mother smiles down at her.

“Perhaps.”

***

Years later, she remembers the illithid—long dead by now, most likely—and wonders if she could put on that skin, too.

Mirrors make her anxious, but she forces herself to stand in front of one to watch the way her form shifts and blurs, lengthening and turning a pale reddish-purple. Seconds later, the illithid stares back at her, dark eyes unreadable. She raises a four-clawed hand, touches the mirror.

_A monster,_ she thinks, and it’s almost a comforting thought.

***

Zavile gives her a brand new journal bound in black leather for her fourteenth birthday, the words _Ryn’s Diary_ embossed on the front in gold. Ryn, who has never even considered keeping a diary, let alone a personalized one, smiles and thanks her, then leaves it in her desk and promptly forgets about it.

For the same birthday, Misae gives her a mouse she caught in the pantry, a small and terrified little thing that she’s put in a cage with some straw. It’s a thoughtful gift, coming from the seven year old who spends more time obsessing over her clothing than anything else. Ryn names it Maple, and is never sure if it’s male or female, or how she would even tell.

Alwara, now a chubby five year old, gives her a handful of flowers ripped out from their father’s flower bed. Marcraes won’t be happy about that, but Ryn puts them in a cup of water and thanks her sister.

It’s nearly six months later when she returns late one night from the city library. She’s been reading up on magic, because part of her wonders if the answer to what she is lies in the arcane, but a persistent thought has been growing in the back of her mind.

She knows the difference between the different kinds of magic by now—divine magic, from the gods, is used by clerics and paladins, while arcane power is used by most others for spells. Sorcerers are born with their magic. Warlocks make pacts with strange beings in return for power.

Wizards, it seems, just read books and think really hard and then cast spells.

The thought, which she hasn’t dared give voice to yet, is _maybe I could do that, too._

Maple chitters at her when she enters her room and immediately heads for her desk. She rummages in her pocket for a piece of bread, tosses it absentmindedly to the mouse. Her thoughts are focused on the notes in her hand, arcane sigils that she found in a book, words that might be a spell. If she could just write it out more neatly—

She remembers, suddenly, that she has a very nice journal in her desk from her mother.

“That might work,” she tells Maple, then rummages around in her desk until she finds the diary. She considers it, fingering the pages to feel their weight, then pulls out a bottle of ink she purchased from a shopkeeper that had told her it was what wizards used to write down their spells. Weighing it in her hand, she stares at the diary, then her scribbled notes from the library.

It takes less time than she expects to copy out the spell. Her pen moves along the sigils like her hand knows what she’s supposed to be writing, and when she’s done, the paper is covered in still-glistening ink.

She touches the paper, looks at the mouse still nibbling on the bread. Takes a breath, and whispers the name of the spell under her breath. (The books say it doesn’t matter what she says, as long as she puts intent behind it.) The air shivers, the sound of a tolling bell echoing for a moment. Maple shudders and falls over.

Ryn prods it tentatively with the end of her pen. It doesn’t move. She unlatches the cage, lifts its still-warm body in her hands and cradles it there for a moment. Its fur is soft, its black eyes fixed open in death.

_I did that,_ she thinks, and feels a rush of sick pride.

***

At fifteen, Ryn enters the service of Sir Olan, an elderly human knight with a nasal voice and a penchant for groping younger women. Zavile raised her (and is raising Misae and Alwara) with the knowledge that they will be knights someday, just like their mother. Ryn is familiar with practice swords and riding horseback. Being a squire is easy as breathing.

Still, she spends late nights in libraries, reading up on magic, copying down the few spells she manages to find. Sir Olan gets frustrated with her when she can barely keep her eyes open the next day, but as far as Ryn is concerned, Olan is a blustering old fool, and the research she’s doing is far more important than knighthood.

It’s because of this that her knighthood ceremony is put off over and over.

It’s also because of this that she meets Cenna.

Cenna is two years younger than Ryn, short and thin with curious eyes, and she follows Ryn like a puppy everywhere. The attention makes Ryn preen—Misae and Alwara, though they are far younger than her, do not look up to her quite like this.

They become friends quickly. Cenna’s from a poor family, raised by a single mother along with her three brothers. Her one hope to lift her family from poverty is to become a knight, even if she has to do so under a creep like Olan.

“I’ve always wanted to be a knight anyway,” Cenna confides one night. Ryn is reading a book on arcane theory while Cenna struggles through the required mathematics all squires have to learn.

Ryn looks up from her book. “To make money?”

“To _protect_ people! To do good things in the world!” Cenna’s eyes shine with excitement. “Zali deserves peace, for once. To have these invaders out. I want to end the war and protect our kingdom.”

Ryn feels a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “That’s a good goal.”

Cenna’s like that—idealistic, full of optimism. Ryn admires it, even if she doesn’t quite understand.

***

This is a lie.

Yrex is frail, for a dragonborn, with a hunch to his red-scaled shoulders and fine, sweeping robes. It’s laughably easy, pretending to be a noble, gaining entry to the finest libraries in the cities he visits. Wave a ringed hand, speak in heavily accented Common, acquiesce to the staring and prodding of the curious, and door after door opens for him.

He’s also the first persona Ryn creates, expressly for the purpose of getting into those libraries. Nobles and court wizards have texts that normal libraries don’t, and the shadier, secret collections of books in the dark parts of the cities also welcome Yrex as long as he can pay—which he does, with jewelry stolen from Ryn’s father.

Through him, Ryn finds decaying scrolls and mouldering tomes that speak of strange things—giving yourself false life, raising undead thralls, bringing the dead back to life. Necromancy fascinates her in a way nothing else has before.

(Later, she wonders if that’s why murder comes so easily to her—death is already a familiar thought.)

***

Valentine is almost certainly _not_ the elf’s real name, but Ryn told her that her own name was Misae, so she has no ground to question ‘Valentine’s’ veracity.

She meets Valentine in a seedy bar, because of course she does. She’s just arrived in Entil, a city in the state of Vyn. The elf is _beautiful_ , so beautiful that Ryn can barely even stutter out a greeting, but somehow Valentine, with her piercing green eyes and perfectly braided dark hair, takes an interest in her. The fact that Ryn offered to buy her a drink might help.

“Where are you from?” she asks Ryn, stirring her drink with lazy movements of her wrist. There’s a white ribbon tied in a bow around her throat, a languid ease to the way she sits.

“Astrum.”

One elegant eyebrow lifts. “That’s an entire continent.”

“It is,” Ryn agrees, taking a sip of her own drink. “Where are you from?”

“I grew up here, in Entil.” Valentine leans forward, placing her hand on Ryn’s. “You’re a secretive one, Misae.”

Ryn makes a noncommittal noise.

Valentine’s finger traces up Ryn’s arm, touch cool and gentle, and Ryn has the sudden realization that she’s being flirted with. “Tell me,” Valentine says, a note of soft command in her voice, “what secrets are you carrying under that cloak of yours?”

Ryn glances around. No one’s looking at them. She lifts the hood of her cloak anyway, so only Valentine can see her face, and then shifts. Her nose elongates, her skin darkens, until she’s wearing a perfect copy of Valentine’s face.

Valentine’s eyes widen ever so slightly. She sits back, lets out a breath of surprise. “That’s a useful skill.”

Despite her common sense warning against it, Ryn feels a rush of pride and smiles. “I can cast spells, too,” she blurts out.

“Well, aren’t you the talented woman,” Valentine murmurs, voice nearly a purr. “We could have use for your talents, Misae.”

“We?” Ryn repeats.

“I’m part of a… group. We’re called the Black Wings. It’s sort of like a family. You seem like you could be very useful, if you turned your abilities towards the right cause. Our cause.”

“Thanks.” She smiles. “My name isn’t Misae, by the way. It’s Ryn.”

If Valentine is surprised, she doesn’t show it. “Call me Val,” she says, holding out a hand. “The Black Wings would like to meet you, Ryn.”

Ryn hesitates for a fraction of a second, then grins and takes her hand.

***

The morning of her knighting dawns overcast. Ryn finds it hard to drag herself out of bed and down to the parade ground, but she’s several years late already, so she might as well show up on time for the ceremony itself. Twenty is an embarrassingly late age at which to be knighted.

The ceremony itself is somewhat underwhelming, even if Cenna is vibrating with excitement beside her. Ryn kneels and bows her head, the lord touches her shoulders with his sword, and then it’s done. She’s Knight Ryn Elphila.

Next to her, Knight Cenna Merot stands up, grinning. “We did it, Ryn,” she says, blue eyes shining, as if Ryn had put in even half the effort Cenna had to get to this point. Still, Ryn smiles back, and touches her shoulder.

“We did it,” she agrees.

***

When Ryn is seven, Zavile and Marcraes sit her down and explain that she is going to be an older sister. They have her put her hand on Zavile’s swollen midsection to feel the thud-thump of a kick from inside.

_You’ll need to take care of your little sibling_ , Zavile informs her. _That’s what older sisters do._

Ryn squares her shoulders, lifts her chin. _I’ll protect them!_

In that moment, she decides that she’ll be the best older sister there ever was. Not just to this new baby—no, also to anyone younger than her who she can protect.

Misae is born three months later, and Ryn holds her while she sleeps, marveling at her paper-thin skin, the way she can see the pulse of veins through its translucence. So delicate, she thinks, like the spun-glass figurines her father puts up around the house, the ones Ryn keeps accidentally knocking off shelves or tripping into.

She has the sudden, horrifying mental image of dropping this baby and Misae shattering like the glass swan she broke last week.

_I won’t let that happen to you,_ she tells Misae. The infant stirs, tiny fist clenched around the blanket she’s swaddled in.

Two years after that, Alwara is born, and nine year old Ryn makes the same promise, running her fingers over Alwara’s thin hair. _I won’t let anyone hurt you_.

Then she’s seventeen, and it’s not a conscious thought anymore, this urge to protect, but when a fifteen year old with freckles and a smile like the sun enters Olan’s service beside her, she sees the same fragility in Cenna.

_I won’t let you shatter. I won’t let anyone break you._

***

After the knighting ceremony, it’s traditional for the newly made knights to joust with each other. Ryn sits on Nutmeg, the stallion she’s ridden for years, hand idly brushing through his tan mane. His muscles flex under her as he snorts, stamping impatiently.

“You’re going to win, Ryn,” Alwara tells her, smiling as she hands Ryn the jousting spear. “You’re going to be the best.”

Ryn laughs, taking the spear. “You know this tournament doesn’t matter, right?”

Her sister shrugs, then scampers off to where Misae stands, arms folded and a bored expression on her face. Ryn adjusts her grip on the spear, then tugs the reins. Nutmeg turns eagerly toward the jousting lane. The clouds have begun to scatter, the sun peeking through into the autumn chill, and Nutmeg’s hooves make sucking noises as he lifts them from the mud last night’s rain left.

At the other end of the lane, Cenna raises her hand in salute before lowering her visor. Ryn returns the gesture and seals her own helmet. Her breathing is suddenly loud, echoing in the enclosed space. Outside, there’s a fairly large crowd—jousting is entertainment, after all—and she can hear cheering as a horn sounds, the signal to begin.

She spurs Nutmeg on. He enters a trot, and she raises her spear until it’s parallel to the ground and aimed at Cenna’s shield, which is rapidly getting closer.

Later, Ryn replays this moment, trying to figure out what happens. Perhaps Nutmeg’s hooves slip in the mud, or her grip on the spear wavers slightly, or Cenna’s shield is at the wrong angle. Either way, when she makes contact, the tip of the spear glances off the metal with a clang. The impact drives the point upwards and into the join between Cenna’s helmet and breastplate.

Someone in the watching crowd screams. Cenna falls backward, crashing to the ground in a pile of metal.

Ryn digs her heels in, trying to get Nutmeg to stop, but it’s several seconds before he slows enough for her to leap off. She stumbles over to where Cenna lies, ripping off her own helmet and throwing herself to her knees at Cenna’s side..

Cenna gasps with pain, spasming as though she’s struggling to breathe. Ryn eases Cenna’s helmet off, inhales sharply when she sees her damaged throat, bleeding and already livid with bruises. Her windpipe is crushed. She doesn’t have much time—

“I’ll heal you,” Ryn says frantically, pressing hands to the sides of Cenna’s neck. There was a spell, a healing spell she’d seen, but not copied into her book. But surely if she just remembers it, it will work. She squeezes her eyes shut and pushes her will _outwards,_ trying to envision Cenna’s throat healing.

A splash of heat over her fingers. Her eyes fly open. There’s bright, arterial red streaming from Cenna’s mouth, so much that the girl is choking on it. Cenna spasms again, her entire body shaking, and then—falls still.

“No,” she says. Distantly, she’s aware of the healers rushing towards them, of the crowd rising to its feet and shouting in confusion. There’s blood all over her hands, ribboning down her wrist when she reaches to feel for a pulse and finds none.

_I did that,_ she thinks, horrified. Looks up to see her mother hurrying towards her, shouting her name, concern written large on her face. Ryn staggers to her feet, unthinking, and Cenna’s head slips from her grasp, hitting the mud with a dull thud. Her eyes are open and glassy with death.

Zavile calls her name, more frantic than Ryn has ever heard her sound.

Ryn turns and flees.

***

This is a synonym for truth.

Jilrya Rookstar smiles too much. She’s a killer, and you can tell if you look too closely at those ice-blue eyes. Jil doesn’t talk much about her past, about the people she’s killed, but she’s more than willing to keep killing if that’s what the Black Wings want her to do.

She’s a druid because Ryn likes to think that nature is, in its own way, a murderer. Everything is born, but everything also dies. Even the gods, her research hints, can be killed. Decay swallows everything.

(Val loves the way she can shift from form to form, says it keeps things interesting. She never asks to see Ryn’s true form; sometimes, Ryn wonders if she even knows that there is a truth under all these lies.)

***

“I adore you,” Val says one night after they make love, her dark hair in its myriad braids thrown across her pillow, one hand on her own chest and one holding Ryn’s.

“Me, or Jil?”

Val’s brow furrows. “There’s no difference.”

“There is.”

“But it’s all _you_.”

Ryn opens her mouth, meaning to say something about how every persona is part of her but _different_ , how being Jilyra is being a completely separate person from Ryn, or Torra, or—gods, even Yrex, and all those are different from each other, and she doesn’t know which one is _her_. Which one goes with the ice-white eyes and grey skin she saw in the mirror all those years ago, the mirrors she’s avoided ever since. The truth of her body she’s always running from.

She can’t make it make sense, even in her own mind, so she shrugs. “Maybe so.”

***

She sits with Cenna on the banks of a stream, sharing a lunch of bread and cheese. It’s summer, she’s nineteen, and everything is warm sunshine and the singing of birds. The kind of day that makes her want to climb a tree to steal apples or go swimming in the fountains or some other stupid, exhilarating thing.

“Watch this,” she tells Cenna, then holds out her hand and shoots a bolt of fire into the stream. Cenna startles, then laughs as the water hisses into steam.

“How did you do that?” she asks.

“Studying,” Ryn says proudly. “I know a bunch of other ones, too.” Not strictly the truth; she knows about five spells.

Cenna’s eyes widen. “Is that what you spend all your time in the library doing?”

Ryn nods. She isn’t strong enough yet to cast most of the spells she reads about, won’t be strong enough for years and years, but she reads the books anyways. Her diary—the gold embossed on the cover long scratched away with a knife, leaving only nondescript black leather—holds a handful of spells: _Fire Bolt. Feather Fall. Ray of Sickness._

She tells Cenna this.

“I bet you’ll be really powerful someday,” Cenna replies, admiration shining in her voice. “The most powerful wizard.”

***

Irnia is a half-elf who crossed the Black Wings—or, perhaps, was only in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, she’s Ryn’s fifth assignment. By now, Ryn is used to the rhythm of these things—Val breaks her in, keeps watch while Ryn does the deed. She expects this to take five minutes, at most.

She does not expect Irnia to be awake and waiting for her.

When Ryn enters the bedroom to find the half-elf standing there in full armor, a dagger in each hand, she does the first thing she thinks of and throws a mote of fire at her. Irnia ducks, and the fire impacts the bed. The sheets begin to smoke, then catch on fire.

Irnia screams, high-pitched and piercing. “Guards!”

Ryn swears, raising her hands to fire another spell, but Irnia’s dagger catches her in the thigh and she doubles over in pain, fingers scrabbling at the weapon embedded in her, going slick with her own blood. The bed is entirely on fire, the blaze spreading to the rest of the room. Dread begins to build in her throat, making it hard to breathe.

She’s fucked up.

Irnia grabs Ryn by the collar and holds a dagger to her neck. The steel is bitingly cold, the edge keen. “Just try and cast a spell on me,” the half-elf hisses. “See how quick I can slit your throat.”

Ryn, who had been lifting her hand to envelop Irnia in lightning, slowly lowers it.

“Good,” Irnia snarls, then drags her down the stairs and out into the street, where the sound of guards approaching is already audible over the roar of the house catching on fire.

Val is nowhere to be seen.

Ryn closes her eyes.

***

Days after the jousting tournament, Cenna’s screams still echo in her ears. Ryn flees Eriv, taking on various faces and bodies and sleeping on the road, under bushes or in empty sheds. ( _Sleeping_ is perhaps not the right word, given that she spends most of the night lying awake, and the rest of it steeped in nightmares of Cenna’s blood all over her.) Her purse—already only containing pocket change—is nearly empty when she reaches Belen, the seaside town closest to Eriv.

She takes on the form of a tattooed, muscular man, tells the first ship captain she finds that her name is Olan, she’s willing to do any work for gold, and she wants to head out as soon as possible.

They leave the next day, heading around the coast and then eventually to Inthral. She stands at the railing and watches the harbor disappear, the land she grew up in receding until Astrum is barely a smear of dark against the horizon.

***

She’s in prison, ankles chained to the floor. The blood has dried black under her fingernails, and her back is starting to ache from sitting so long on the stone floor. She’s still wearing Jilyra’s form. The guards have told her that she’ll be tried for arson and attempted murder, which seems reasonable.

Val won’t be happy about her failure. Word might even reach the higher ranks of the Black Wings, if Irnia was an important enough assignment. Ryn isn’t sure how far the group’s influence spreads, or even anything about the people who run it beyond a few names, but they’re powerful enough. She’s dead either way.

Strangely, she doesn’t really mind. Or feel anything much at all. She’s a murderer; this was a long time coming.

“I deserve this,” she informs the empty cell, and gets no answer from the silence.

Eventually, she falls asleep, limbs at awkward angles and back pressed against the cold stone wall. The sound of metal scraping against metal wakes her. She cranes her neck to squint at the barred window set high in the cell wall. There’s someone out there, using a file to remove the bars.

A halfling man drops down through the window, straightens up to give her a disapproving look. “Jilyra. You’ve made quite a mess for us to clean up.”

“Perno,” Ryn says, smiling mirthlessly. “Come to kill me to make sure I don’t rat out the Black Wings?”

“I’ve come to break you out, actually. Valentine’s orders.” His tone of voice makes it clear that if it were up to him, Ryn would be on her own. “And then you’re to get out of Entil and never return.”

Ryn blinks. “Wait. You’re letting me live?”

“What did I just say?” Perno snaps, and calls her something in Halfling that she assumes is unflattering. Still, he’s already working at her ankle shackles with his lockpicks. Before long, the one on her left ankle clicks open. She rubs the chafed skin where it had been.

“Can I see Val before I go?” she asks, hating how pitiful her voice sounds. Perno pauses, his lockpicks falling still.

“It’s probably best if you don’t,” he says, voice gentler, then twists his wrist and unlocks the second shackle. He stands up and offers her a hand.

She pushes to her feet without taking his hand and immediately feels bad about it. “Thanks for, uh. Breaking me out of prison.”

“Right,” Perno says. “Now get the hell out of here.”

***

She dreams the same dream over and over, a dream about a face like her own—her true one, ice and gray and all. She’s floating in a silver mist, and when she looks down she can’t see her own body, like her mind is unmoored from the physical world. All that exists is the mist and the mirror-face watching her.

_Who are you?_ she asks.

A voice emerges, coldly feminine, but the mouth does not move. _You are Ryn._

In the dream, she does not ask what that answer means. Instead, she says, _Who is Ryn, then?_

_A destroying. A downfall._

_What do you mean?_

_You ruined a family_ , the voice says, dispassionate, and she sees Alwara’s wide eyes, Misae’s smirk, her father’s laugh, her mother shouting her name and running across the jousting ground towards her, a thousand childhood memories shattering like glass into blood-drawing shards—

_Stop it,_ she says, desperate. _Stop_.

The images fade; the face returns, wreathed in cold silver. _You search still for belonging._

Wouldn’t you, she wants to say, wouldn’t anyone? She doesn’t say it, but somehow the voice knows. It is a dream, after all.

_Why would you be worthy of another family, when you would only shatter it as soon as you touched it?_ A laugh, mocking and sharp. _Why would you be worthy of love? Of belonging?_

She’s crying, in this dream, crying without a body—an ache tethered to her throat and chest, like a scream that can’t force its way out.

_I’m not worthy,_ she says, and everything dissolves into silver and ice and a burning shame rooted in her stomach.

***

The city-air of Iryo is dry as the desert that surrounds it, smells like sun-scorched sand. Ryn feels almost at home in the desert—all this nothing, sand shifting in the wind, stone wearing away into new shapes.

A glance around to make sure she’s alone out here on the road, and then she shifts from one of the nondescript human form she uses for travel to a tall, blue-skinned, curved-horned tiefling. She checks to make sure her toy bow is still in her pack—have to have _something_ to pretend to be a rogue—then takes a swig from her water canteen.

Overhead, an endless sky of blue, broken only by wisps of white on the horizon and a single, lone bird winging black across the expanse of heaven.

Torra smiles, brushes the hair out of her eyes, and begins walking towards the city.

***

This is truth.

Ryn wakes and there’s no blood on her hands, not yet. There’s a warmth lingering in the air that she wants to name _family_ , a longing shaped like colorful scarves and a patterned, thick shell and ghost-gold wings and a silent smile and a hand offering crumbling pastries.

It could be belonging. She wants it to be.

She lies in the darkness, thinks of ice-eyes and a dead mouse, of handfuls of names swelling under her tongue, each hers and not hers at the same time. Thinks of how she’s lying with every breath she takes. Thinks of blood, and eyes fixed wide in death.

It’s only a matter of time.

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to kavi for being Best DM. also there's a [ryn playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/qbmys6yghpe1fz5o9ivdt8ca5/playlist/7HD0G1cnZybXpFwBBe53mf?si=3-c7z30DSJ-yQbShqxMjVA) for interested parties.


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